


Anthem

by justbygrace



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Drug Abuse, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-30
Updated: 2017-01-30
Packaged: 2018-09-20 19:31:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9509129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justbygrace/pseuds/justbygrace
Summary: First sentence prompt ficlet that turned into a 70's fest set in America. Warning for drug use and swearing.





	

The first time they met was in the middle of a riot. She was the stereotypical poster child for the anti-war resistance; he was the veteran she thought she was defending. He was on one side of the police barrier, and she was on the other. He slipped handcuffs around her wrists, marveling a bit in the midst of his anger about her fragile bones. It was not love at first sight. 

He was full of anger and disgust at her performance, sneering about "students" and "stupid pranks”; she was riding on a combination of the higher road and the after effects of whatever she had smoked and drank and injected. He begged his superiors to be able to interrogate her, but they didn't give a shit about her or her merry band; they had been making a point and it had been made - they released her after the standard twenty-four hours. She grinned and fluttered her eyelashes at him and sauntered out arm-in-arm with some chick with fake breasts straight into the arms of a greasy wannabe. He lasted three more days on the force before he walked out.

The second time they met was in the middle of a riot of a different kind. He had spent weeks on his motorcycle and it wasn't until he saw the tents and vans and wreaths of smoke of their group that he figured out where he was going. Everyone welcomed him with open arms and shared beds and invitations he hadn't received since being "over there" and he should have been repulsed, but he couldn't find the will to feel much anymore. And he didn't either until someone with fragile bones grabbed his hand and pulled him into a tent and he learned that it wasn't love at first fuck either.

He was strangely content in the camp, going where they did and smoking what they did and occasionally holding signs if that was the way the wind blew. She was still Jimmy's girl, and all the begging and pleading and fucking didn't seem to have an effect on that. It wasn't like Jimmy gave two shits about them, but when Jimmy wanted his girl to be available, she better damn well be available. For a while he played his part, played it like the good little soldier he'd always thought he was, until the day Jimmy's fist landed on her jaw and then he realized that soldier or not, there wasn't anything good left in him.

She wasn't so much pissed as she was livid, lighting into him with fists and words and tears, and he could do nothing but stand and take it, take it while the smoke from the camp drifted over their heads, floating past them and into the valley and getting hundreds of unsuspecting housewives higher than a kite. Eventually she ran out of words and tears and anger and she stared at him like she was waking up from a dream that she had hated and there was a new day dawning that she had been looking forward to for ages. He gestured towards the motorcycle and the unexplored horizon, offering himself in return for everything he had taken from her. And when she straddled the bike and wrapped her arms around his middle, he found he didn't have any room for new regret and that love had not completely abandoned him.


End file.
